This summer (2022), the spokesperson of the ruling party in Serbia and the regime in Belgrade and its official lawyer in scandalous criminal processes, V. Djukanovic nicknamed “Bison”, announced that “Serbia will be forced to begin the denazification of the Balkans”. The same night pro-Belgrade criminal gangs in Kosovo organized barricades in the north of Kosovo, using the tried and tested method of the “log revolution”.¹ Germany and France mediated this incident, but military forces continue to mobilize, tensions are still high and are going from bad to worse as we are writing these words.

Serbian Marxists-Leninists and our organization have been warning for a long time about the growth of renewed Greater Serbian aspirations of the ruling Belgrade clique, which have been further strengthened by Putin’s criminal imperialist aggression against Ukraine (which the aggressor calls “denazification”). In January 2022, together with other Balkans anti-fascist organizations, in a statement “Let’s stand up against a new war!” we warned, with the logic of the deepening capitalist crisis and growing inter-imperialist tensions, of the dangers of a new war in the Balkans.

In the past period, the public witnessed the provocations of the Vučić regime and its satellites in Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Croatia. Some members of the Serbian government, like the Minister of Police, Vulin – openly calls for a programme of Greater Serbia, which he, in line with the Great-Russian chauvinists-Putinists, calls “Serbian world”. Vulin, once champion of the Milošević and now of the Vučić regime, is the only Belgrade official that visited Russia after its invasion on Ukraine. In the new government, he will get the position of the chief of State Security. Revisionist parties in Serbia are in close connection with this obscure fascist police official, who leads the “Movement of Socialists” and presents himself as a “leftist”; the face of social-fascism. Other representatives of the most reactionary, most chauvinist sectors of monopoly capital and of the fascist aggressor Putin also took high political positions in the Balkans. Corrupt chauvinist Dodik in Bosnia, charlatan Milanović in Croatia, chetnik Mandić in Montenegro, mafia boss Radojčić in Kosovo, reactionary Janša in Slovenia, Orban in a neighboring Hungary, share among themselves new maps and “non-papers.”²

All of them are part of the almost open preparations for war in the Balkans. The Vučić regime wants at least Kosovo and Montenegro under the control of Belgrade and to divide Bosnia using Dodik and Milanović. At the same time Vučić’s main ally Orban and the new Italian prime-minister, the neo-fascist Meloni, are openly calling for a redivision of Croatia, Vučić’s great obsession. Orban is openly showing maps of Greater Hungary containing Croatian Slavonia and Serbian Voivodina and parts of the Croatian and Slovenian Adriatic coast (and also parts of Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia, Austria; it is actually a map of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire). The politics of Greater-Serbian and other chauvinists was and still is: to conquer other peoples and help the imperialists to conquer its own. It is fascist chaos.

The newly formed Greater Serbian clique is seeking revenge for its defeats in previous wars in the former Yugoslavia;³ just as Putin wants revenge for the defeat and humiliation of the revisionist social-imperialist Soviet Union in the Cold War and for a “Bolshevik stab in the back”⁴ to the Russian Empire in the First World War. This was the same way Hitler wanted revenge for the defeat and humiliation of the German Empire after the First World War.

Monstrous and diabolic phenomena of the imperialist era, fascism, representing the most reactionary, most chauvinist sectors of monopoly capital, which organizes the petty-bourgeoisie and reactionary lumpen gangs – is again showing its face and wants the re-division of Europe, of the Balkans. They dream about their “multipolarity”, about the re-division of the world. As Georgy Dimitrov pointed out: Fascism is war.

The strategy of the Great-Serbian bourgeoisie had more than a century to develop (just as the communists had at least a century to learn to recognize it; read Stalin’s reply to Semich on the national question in Yugoslavia). It continues the Belgrade bourgeoisie nationalist politics of the bloody Karađorđević kings and the revisionist criminal Tito: be a good servant of all the imperialists, especially of the most powerful ones, and to seek for a chance to conquer the Balkans.

The regime of the capitalist super-agent Vučić continues to play this game, having ties with both U.S. and Russian, German and French, British and Chinese imperialists, guaranteeing all of their interests in the Balkans at the same time and wagering on what side it will go at the right moment to fulfill its plans.

To put it in an Enverist way, this “dance of the inter-imperialist struggles and alliances” that is confusing for some is not only the result of the special conditions of the Balkans, but of imperialism as a world system. Russian capitalist monopolies are not only fighting with the American, but are also tied to large sections of the European and U.S. monopoly bourgeoisie, with its most reactionary and most chauvinist sections, and especially with the US and European far-right, Trumpist and fascist movements. Serbian bourgeoisie is using this situation with traditional cunningness…

Will U.S. imperialism get strengthened in today’s international mobilization against the aggressive Russian imperialism? Well, did British imperialism get strengthened in the international anti-fascist mobilization against the aggressive Hitlerite German imperialism? It certainly did not. Soon after the defeat of German fascism, the British Empire and the world colonialist system collapsed. Why this was the case? Because the Second World War, as the First one, as Stalin said, was the result of the general crisis of capitalism and not (only) because of mistakes of any particular statesmen.⁵ Today’s international situation is also the result of ever sharpening of the general capitalist crisis. So the decline of US imperialism, which was made official by its withdrawal from Afghanistan, cannot be stopped.

Even more, the struggle against the most reactionary, most chauvinist, most aggressive sector of international monopoly, namely finance capital6 is a struggle against the head of the snake of the world imperialist system. Putin and Lavrov are even cynically proclaiming they are imitating American imperialism; as Bush accidentally mixed up Iraq with Ukraine (but it is not an accident that Putin supported Bush in imperialist adventure in Afghanistan). The decay of the capitalist crisis and imperialist forces also gave the Hitlerites conditions, encouragement and justifications for monstrous plans and launch catastrophic wars for a new division of the world. While there is a capitalist system of the world economy, for which “Marxists more than once declared harbours elements of general’s crises and armed conflicts (and that, hence, the development of capitalism in our time proceeds not in the form of smooth, and even progress but through crises and military catastrophe)”⁶ – dangers of fascism and new world war, new Hitlers and Putins, will come again and again…

In critical historical moments of fighting fascism and war, it would be disastrous to drop out of sight that the capitalist crisis is characterized by the social struggles not only between the working and the bourgeoisie classes, but also between, smaller or bigger or even monopoly bourgeoisie classes among themselves, both nationally and internationally. The class of the era, the working class, is fighting to win more and more allies and to isolate the most aggressive and most reactionary class enemy, primarily fascist and pro-fascist elements of the monopoly financial bourgeoisie. The Comintern-Dimitrovian strategy of the people’s democratic front is proving to be perfectly correct and is a mighty weapon in the hands of the revolutionary working class and the Marxist-Leninists.

War in Balkans, provoked by Putinists, could be an opportunity for the Vučić regime, which is seeking ways out to emerge from its accumulated problems and the mire of crime and corruption into which it has sunk and the catastrophic social, economic and political situation, which through demonstrations and elections the people and citizens of Serbia have shown they no longer want or can tolerate.

We can now all see what the future of Europe would have been if Hitler was stopped in Spain, if Britain and France did not put an embargo on the Spanish Republic, if European governments and not only the Leninist-Stalinist Soviet Union and the Comintern had sent arms and support to the Spanish people to defend their independence and democracy, to fight against Hitler, Franco and Mussolini, against fascism; if European reactionaries had not betrayed Czechoslovakia and principles of collective international security (pushed by the Leninist-Stalinist Soviet foreign policy), being feared from Hitler and making business with his regime. If the hypocritical European Chamberlainism and U.S. isolationism had been defeated earlier, Hitler would have been stopped, his fascist regime would have “collapsed under the weight of its own crimes” (Stalin) and the Holocaust in Europe might have been avoided. We can also imagine that, if the arms embargo to Bosnia during the Greater-Serbian aggression in the 1990s was lifted, genocide in Srebrenica would never have happened. In these critical moments, when the imminent danger of diabolic Putin’s plans and of nuclear catastrophe is still not out of sight, it is an important lesson of our modern history. Only the people’s struggle can defeat fascism and imperialism, only the armed revolutionary peoples can show that the imperialists are “paper tigers”.

All the peoples in Balkans understand very well that if Kiev had fallen into the hands of the Great-Russian invaders, the war in the Balkans would have happened the following day. The Balkans Putinists were sharpening their knives and preparing their plans. The peoples of the world know that the danger of a general imperialist and nuclear war could, in the case of not defending Kiev, happen at any moment. They know Putin would not stop there, as Kremlin propaganda machine openly declares. But the struggle of the people of Ukraine and the peoples of the world will define this century, and not imperialist megalomaniacs like Putin. Now, faced with all-Ukrainian peoples resistance and counter-offensive, the fascist-Putinists and their agents in the most reactionary sections of the European and American bourgeoisie and in the Balkans are getting into trouble, try to wash their bloody hands but also to buy time to make new vicious plans.

The essence of the politics of the Greater-Serbian bourgeoisie nationalists is ethnic cleansing; there is no other way that they can fulfill their dreams of conquest. Everything else is just a maneuver. But they will face defeat once more, because it cannot be otherwise. Despite their previous atrocities and their new bloody plans and wishes and those of their new pro-fascist allies, Bosnia will remain one and undivided, Albanian people in Kosovo will defend their right of self-determination, Montenegro will remain Montenegrin, and Slavonia, Istria and Dalmatia will remain in Croatia, as Vojvodina will remain an autonomous region in Serbia despite the plans of such “friends” as Orban. Peoples cannot be destroyed, their struggle is stronger than any clique of bloody profiteers, than any “paper tiger”. “Hitlers come and go, but the German people and state remain” – said Stalin…

The Greater-Serbian Belgrade politics is the principal enemy of peace and freedom in the Balkans. It is a focal point and knot of the imperialist influence in the Balkans. It is a filthy source of the reactionary chauvinist virus in the Balkans. Destroying it would mean revolutionizing the Balkans, it would mean qualitatively greater freedom for the development of the democratic peoples’ and working-class movements in the Balkans – and there is no one else to destroy it except the revolutionary struggle of the democratic forces of the people led by the working class.

The people of Serbia is preparing its rebellion against the corrupt, warmongering and traitorous regime in Belgrade; that will strengthen the democratic forces in the Balkans that want peace and friendly relations among the good and brave Balkans peoples and nations.

Down with the corrupt Belgrade gang of chauvinist provocateurs and warmongers!

Down with Putin, down with fascism and war! Arm Ukraine now!

Glory to Ukraine!

Imperialists – hands off the Balkans!

In the fight for peace and freedom among the Balkans peoples! Let’s stand up against a new war!

Let us all unite in the people’s front against the capitalist crisis, fascism and war!

October 2022

Notes:

1. Paramilitary action organized by Greater Serbian agents in Croatia that began in 1990 with the proclamation of a separate “Serbian” state within its border (a similar process as today’s Great-Russian “People’s Republics” in Ukraine). The action included building of barricades with logs.

2. A term used in diplomacy to refer to papers that do not carry official letterheads or seals of a government. These are the remains of secret diplomacy (which October revolution put an end to).

3. Vučić himself is remembered for calling for “killing of 100 Muslims for each dead Serb” in July 1995, while the Srebrenica genocide was happening. It comes from the German fascist occupier that had policy of “100 dead Serbs for each dead German” to stop the anti-fascist rebellion in Serbia.

4. Old police corporal Putin, as the army corporal Hitler, blames the communists for the collapse of the “sacred Empire”. He repeated it in many speeches. In general, Putin’s anti-Bolshevik and fascist speech before invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is repeating his old White-Russian thesis. He openly proclaimed his real goal is “decommunization” of Ukraine, destroying its national independence, its people and national state.

5. The Origin and Character of the Second World War, 1946, Stalin.

6. “Comrades, fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” – Georgi Dimitrov, The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism – Main Report delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International, August 2, 1935.

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